


Only Mostly Dead

by Cryptovex



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Alara, Canon-Typical Necromancy, Gen, Innistrad, Kaladesh, Ravnica, implied suicidal ideation, religious trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27828925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptovex/pseuds/Cryptovex
Summary: The multiversal adventures of Viktoria Rutstein, Nephalia’s third-best necro-alchemist.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. The Undiscovered Country

**Author's Note:**

> Updates will come piecemeal and erratically, probably a few paragraphs at a time for the most part. Thanks for bearing with me!

For the first time in months, the clouds parted over Havengul’s dreary shingles. The gusts through the tight streets were as salty as ever, but with far less of their usual piercing chill. A few townsfolk strolled through the plaza, umbrellas and raincloaks at the ready, while others tentatively dismantled the barricades and holy wards on their windows. Nobody outright called the sunshine a _blessing_ or an _omen_ \- their faith in such things would take years to recover - but there was a palpable sense that the world had turned a corner. The slithering, porous abominations had been banished, the memories were fading, the wounds were healing. Emrakul’s power still leaked from the moon in trace amounts, but the odd three-headed goat or six-limbed frog were barely footnotes in the litany of Innistradi horrors.

Viktoria Rutstein spent the day airing out her laboratory, savoring the last notes of the musty, acrid smell as the breeze struggled to root it out. She had spent years building the layers of odor, and mourned its passing even as she was acutely aware of the importance of lab ventilation. Too many colleagues had become sick and deranged in their seclusion, and not in a fun way. Though she didn’t have proof, Viktoria suspected that fume-addled scientists were far more likely to study Eldrazi remnants with a cavalier contempt for safety, and paid the price. Even with stringent containment, Viktoria refused every invitation to work with any piece of an Eldrazi, even if it was most likely just a mutilated squid bought from a conman. For now, she kept her head down and waited for the Eldrazi fad to pass, when Nephalia’s eggheads would come to their senses and return to good, old-fashioned necro-alchemy.

As Viktoria sorted stacks of notes from her teenage apprenticeship, a high-pitched bell rang out from down the hall. She grabbed her least-bloodstained apron, took a breath, and stepped out in-character as the clerk of _Rutstein’s Wholesale Elixirs, Tinctures, and Ointments._ She instantly recognized the “customer” as Constable Abramovic, right on time for the monthly inspection. Abramovic pretended to browse rows of expired vials as Viktoria eagerly prepared for another cat-and-mouse game, until she saw the Constable’s face. Her hair was losing its close-cropped precision, her “plainclothes disguise” was just a shabby coat over a standard uniform, and she had clearly slept horribly for weeks. Viktoria had no idea if she should offer the familiar routine or extend honest sympathy, and hedged her bets.

”Can I help you, Miss?”

Abramovic gave a heavy sigh and intently browsed the shop’s most potent sedatives. “I’m not sure if anyone can.”

Viktoria had no idea how to respond, and began counting out the usual bribe. Abramovic reached to fidget with the symbol of Avacyn she no longer wore, then filled a basket with enough laudanum to knock out a horse. Viktoria certainly didn’t _miss_ seeing that damned collar everywhere, least of all on staves smashing years of her work, but its sudden and total absence from the world felt no less tragic. At the height of the Eldrazi nightmare, even Viktoria had prayed with the fervor of a Lunarch.

Abramovic hefted her basket onto the counter and struggled to make eye contact. “This is probably the last time I’ll see you, Vik.”

Viktoria looked at the basket, then at her, and felt a cold, constricting dread.

Abramovic backpedaled and nearly knocked the basket to the floor. “Not - not like _that,_ I promise. _Never._ I - I’m quitting the force tomorrow, withdrawing my life savings, and going... _somewhere._ I don’t know where yet. I’ll hang around the harbor until something catches my eye.”

All of Viktoria’s planned taunts and rebuttals froze in her brain. She had never seen Abramovic like this - not after her divorce, not after her brother’s death, not after she had nearly been mauled by a werewolf. Her mind latched onto the only response that seemed appropriate, etched into her from birth.

_”May you find the peace you seek; oppose the strong, support the weak; and find rest in the Blessed Sleep.”_

Abramovic only barely held back tears. Viktoria panicked that her tone sounded insincere, or she got the meter wrong, or if any prayer at all rubbed salt in her wounds. She hastily waved away Abramovic’s money and dumped out the entire till.

”This isn’t a bribe. This is a personal gift. I can’t - _won’t_ \- sell you those, but take this and wander as far as you can.”

Abramovic gathered up the money, gave as perfect a salute as she could, and departed.

Viktoria took down the _Open_ sign, shuttered the shop’s windows, and returned to her lab. She sat down and looked through more of her old notes, struck by the ambition of every sketch and theory. She had filled whole notebooks with plans to push metaphysical laws to their limits and beyond. Even when she failed catastrophically, she had a fantastic story for her friends. Yet in recent years, her work had become thoroughly conventional. She had plenty of excuses - stocks of the most dangerous reagents were tightly monitored, the musculature was impossible, Ludevic had already done it better - but they always rang hollow. She had barely stitched a ghoul at all since the _recent trouble,_ despite an abundance of corpses and a Church in shambles.

As Viktoria read her old scribblings, a plan began to form that would make her younger self proud. She grabbed a fresh notepad, brewed a kettle of fearsomely strong tea, and prepared to work.

* * *

Three black-market shopping trips later, Viktoria proudly overlooked a heap of dynamos, tubing, beakers, screws, scrap metal, and enough illegal reagents to level all of Nephalia. Budget constraints required a few tweaks from the blueprints, even after she pawned her rarest Church-banned textbooks. No matter. Even a partial success would recoup her investment and then some. Not for any practical reason - quite the opposite - but from licensing the design to every suspiciously-wealthy crackpot.

A gaggle of homunculi were hard at work screwing and soldering the tedious bits, while Viktoria worked on the parts that required true spontaneous insight. She had no disrespect for them - that was a fatal mistake for any mad scientist - and made sure to praise their diligence and provide name-brand nutrient slurry. Honestly, she never understood why her peers couldn’t be content with a magnificent menial-labor force, and had to make them vivisection samples and all-purpose scapegoats as well. Nephalia was overdue for another homunculus revolt, and Viktoria wanted to be well outside the province when it came.

Anyway, the machine’s shape was quickly coming into focus. A plain coffin lay at a shallow angle, hooked up to thick snarls of piping and immense bellows. Most of it was fairly simple and capable of being built in just a few hours, but the core components demanded exhaustive precision. The goal was just a simple twist on the basic principles of necro-alchemy, but such foundations resisted any twisting at all. Even worse, preliminary tests were innately impossible, and nobody would volunteer to try a device that even lifelong blasphemers recoiled from. Viktoria would have to sample a moment of death with only theoretical testing, alone.

Of course, if it worked, it would be the greatest metaphysical breakthrough in Innistradi history. Once people were willing to discuss theology again, she could make a fortune on the lecture circuit with her tales of glimpsing the Blessed Sleep. She could charge doctors a fortune to analyze anything about her, and create a beautifully horrific tangle in legal definitions of death and undeath.

Viktoria finished a satisfactory first draft of the machine by midnight, and ate a long-overdue meal of warmed-over sausages and gray cabbage. She fell into bed, paper at the ready to record any sudden insights, but her exhaustion brought a tide of unwelcome questions. _What the fuck am I doing? What am I trying to prove? What if this fails, or brings me back as a mindless ghoul, or worse? Why can't I just stick to **normal** work? _She fell asleep only shortly before dawn, with no satisfying answers.

Viktoria awoke around noon to the familiar gravelly Nephalian sky. She ate semi-stale biscuits with jam on her tiny balcony as a drizzle rolled in from the sea. Havengul looked so small and dingy from this angle, a few rickety neighborhoods sustained only by vampiric patronage. Even they were divesting from this money-pit of a town, in search of provinces full of docile, gullible humans. Necro-alchemists were leaving too, following Ludevic’s lead and building remote labs far from prying eyes.

If Viktoria’s device worked, she’d be the talk of the town for years to come. If it failed, she’d at least be immortalized as a grisly cautionary tale. Before she could talk herself back out of it, she wrote vague letters to five colleagues with directions to break into her lab and investigate if she didn’t write back within a week. She scribbled a will, divvying up her assets and equipment, and left it on her desk. She descended the creaking stairs back to her lab, ran a final check of every system, shooed out the homunculi, and sat in the coffin wearing an absurd galvanic skullcap. She flipped the switch, and the world was ripped out from under her.


	2. Culture Shock

After an unknowable amount of time, Viktoria awoke facedown in a spongy, porous plain flecked with jagged bone shards. She rolled over and saw a roiling, stormy sky that would have been soothingly familiar if it wasn’t magenta.

Once Viktoria marginally came to grips with this world, its smell drove all else from her mind. Between gagging coughs, she searched for comparisons - the abandoned slaughterhouse she used to loot for practice corpses, a beached whale’s carcass in the summer heat, the charred flesh of a failed experiment. Yet none of them matched the _pervasiveness_ of this smell, how layered it was past the initial assault. Viktoria tied a rag around her nose and mouth and the component odors resolved into focus, though she couldn’t begin to identify half of them.

Viktoria stood up with too much effort and surveyed the land. Rancid flesh and ribcages stretched to the horizon, with hardly any changes in elevation. Beasts resembling failed stitcher projects shambled in the distance, and Viktoria felt a bizarre sense of familiar comfort. Half-collapsed castles dotted the landscape, but they could easily just be carcasses of ancient megafauna. Viktoria picked a direction at random and began trudging forth, with plenty of time to think.

_Yep, I’m in Hell. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I don’t recall any Lunarch preaching about **this.** Or any crazed street prophet, for that matter. This is definitely a fitting Hell for me, but it’s awfully calm and impersonal. I was expecting an archfiend to explain and carry out my torments personally, but in hindsight that seems awfully arrogant. Or maybe they’re just running late._

_I wonder which religion got it right. Maybe some weird backwoods cult I’ve never heard of. I wonder if they were persecuted for heresy, and if they were, how the Inquisitors are punished here. I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces._

After a few minutes of walking, just long enough for this world to become slightly banal, Viktoria crested a hill and saw a half-dozen emaciated figures fighting over one meager carcass. She instantly recognized them as vampires given to savage desperation, like the disowned Stromkirks who subsisted on butcher castoffs. This must be their Hell too, stripped of their charms and glamers and noble titles. As the only fresh meal for miles, Viktoria gave them a wide berth and gripped the sharpest shard of bone she could find.

Once the coast was clear and Viktoria’s fear subsided, she felt a faint force pressing in on her mind. It came from all directions, with strong pockets scattered through the land. The half-dead flesh of the world wanted desperately to rise again, reaching out to any mind with the will to summon it. It made a compelling pitch. Viktoria had a healthy disdain for ghoulcalling, with its reliance on superstitious chants and rituals. Besides, every necro-alchemical text drilled in the importance of having a self-made killswitch (or two) on every project. But it would be so _easy_ to try here, just a little. Just to see what all the fuss is about.

Viktoria climbed atop a safely inert rock and focused intently on a crawling hand, the first project in every introductory stitcher’s guide. A handful of bones and tendons, none more than a few inches long. Absolutely nothing else. With her shiv in hand, Viktoria closed her eyes and visualized every component and link as clearly as possible. She opened her eyes and saw it perfectly constructed - plus or minus the chipped and decayed material - skittering across the ground.

As Viktoria moved to kick it apart, she felt a flood of necrotic power wash over her as if a dam had burst. An arm rose from the ground, linking itself to the hand, followed by an amalgam of corpse parts from vastly different species. Even without a face, it was clearly eager for new parts.

Viktoria took off sprinting. _Shit shit shit. This was so obviously a test of my hubris and I walked right into it._ The open plain had nowhere to get cornered, but nowhere to hide. Viktoria spotted a crumbled tower in the distance that might be vaguely defensible, and wasted no time heading to it. The undead beast was still figuring out how to run with five and a half legs, but Viktoria knew never to underestimate a zombie’s top speed. The ground churned under her feet as a necrotic chain reaction roiled the land. Most of the risen ghouls collapsed in moments, but a few nimble ones joined the hunt.

Far from any shelter, Viktoria wrenched her ankle on a half-buried ribcage and fell hard. As the echoing screeches drew closer, visions of home filled her mind. _The overwrought stonework of Stensia. The crisp air of a Nephalia’s morning. The sunset filtered through the Kessig woods—_

Hell disappeared, and Viktoria lay in a roadside ditch outside Havengul. The omnipresent smell of decay gave way to the familiar blend of mist, mud, and manure. Once her heart was no longer at risk of bursting, Viktoria noticed that she still held her bone shiv. She hid the souvenir from Hell in her apron and waited for a carriage to hitchhike home.


	3. Interplanar Corpse Arbitrage

Viktoria slept on and off for days, whenever her panic receded into mere nightmares. She picked at dense, bland food whenever hunger overpowered nausea. Once she could bear to return to her lab, she destroyed her machine with the biggest hammer she had. She shredded the blueprints and tossed them on the wreckage, then sat down to write followup letters to her peers. Three hours later, she had written _disregard previous letter_ five times and dumped the envelopes in a mailbox.

The next morning, Viktoria awoke before dawn, burning with energy. She scrawled an urgent five-page note to her friend Otto and sent it off by express homunculus-courier. After twenty minutes of drinking tea and staring at the clock, she heard a knock at the door. She opened it to find a very confused Otto in a bathrobe over last night’s stained lab coat. Viktoria waved him into her parlor, triple-locked the door, and offered him tea. Once he was settled enough to ask the _point_ of all this, she began.

”If you repeat a word of what I’m about to say, I will carve you up and stitch each part into a different skaab.”

Otto nodded as steadily as shock and caffeine would let him. Viktoria mentally rehearsed her script one last time and took a breath.

”The other day, I built a machine to sample death temporarily. Hence, the letter.”

Otto’s eyes lit up with the answer to one mystery and the creation of dozens more. “And it _worked?!_ Vik, this is _incredible,_ how did you possibly-“

Viktoria grimaced and cut him off. “I went to Hell. Not any Hell you’ve heard of, I still don’t know who got it right. And then I came back.”

Otto took a long time to be capable of responding. “...Can I see the machine?”

Viktoria tried to look genuinely apologetic. “I destroyed it. Sorry. I _know_ we’re all about profaning the border between life and death, but this was a bridge too far even for me. I couldn’t risk it falling into the wrong hands.”

Otto tried to hide his disappointment.

”...But I’m not sure I need it anymore.”

Otto grabbed a notebook and began scribbling intently, making it clear that he was writing in his private cipher. _“Say more right now.”_

Viktoria took a moment to find words for her racing thoughts. “Pessimistically, I got a sneak peek of Hell as a cautionary tale, and I shouldn’t push my luck again. But optimistically - and I realize how insane this sounds - I might have a stable transit circuit. I keep having semi-lucid dreams of Hell, and I feel like I could just... _step into_ them. Sometimes it takes willpower _not_ to.”

Otto looked up from his notes with a trace of dismay. “Vik, I hate to be a wet blanket, but isn’t there any part of this that couldn’t be explained by toxic fume inhalation? Or a psychotic break?”

Viktoria huffed. “Otto, I fully ventilated my lab the day before I tried this, and I have _plenty_ of safeguards in place to not go full Ludevic. And besides...”

Otto leaned in with glee, even while his gaze said _such as?..._

Viktoria pulled the shiv from her apron and thrust it into the air. “I brought back a souvenir.”

Otto snatched it from her hand and inspected it with a frown. “It certainly _smells_ like Hell, but it looks like every bone shard in every drownyard in Nephalia.”

Viktoria grabbed it back and realized that he was absolutely right. _Time for Plan B._

”Alright, smartass, I have a business proposition. Hell is _littered_ with corpses as far as the eye can see. They’re far from fresh, but they could be useful filler in quick-and-dirty skaabs. I don’t know how much mass I can bring back with me, but still, our days of robbing pauper’s graves are over. I’ll handle the supply chain if you handle the frontend. Interested?”

Otto took a minute to choke this down. “Are you proposing that we _strip-mine Hell?”_

”Of _course_ not! We can’t flood the market, and we can’t produce a suspicious number of corpses out of nowhere.”

Otto was not reassured.

“Fine. I’ll drop the idea until I have a proof of concept, then I’ll ask you again. Deal?”

Otto nodded uneasily. “Deal. Now, I have a bunch of very real projects to get back to...”

“You know the way out. Don’t let me keep you waiting.”

* * *

Alone again, Viktoria sketched schematics for Hellproof gear. A diving suit would make a perfect foundation, lightened and reinforced wherever possible. A sturdy burlap sack should work for corpse containment, and Viktoria had plenty of tried-and-true bags from her time as a graverobber’s lackey. The biggest sticking point was a consecrated blade for emergency defense. Holy relics were in short supply these days, and it might dissolve her sinning flesh and a denizen of Hell with equal speed. Yet it was a necessary risk, and hopefully the suit’s thick gloves would offer some protection. 

After an hour of roaming the docks, Viktoria found a merchant willing to sell a top-of-the-line diving suit to someone who had clearly never set foot in the sea. With her savings nearly gone, she called in every favor she had and vowed even more to secure a blessed dagger from a notorious fence. It didn’t look like much as a blade, but it shone with a lunar glow even in pure darkness and made Viktoria’s conscience whinier than usual. She stitched together a few training dummies, which the dagger sliced through like tissue paper.

With her tools firmly in hand, Viktoria suited up and focused intently on Hell. It wasn’t difficult - the dreams had only become more vivid, sometimes with surreal glimpses of other worlds mixed in. Viktoria yielded to the visions, letting them overflow her mind and displace reality. With a wrenching, nauseous _snap,_ she was once again standing in Hell.

The place had been redecorated. Most of the scenery was familiar, but Viktoria didn’t recall volcanic jungles on the horizon. Plumes of ash spread upward, blotting out the bright-pink sky. Viktoria stood among the withered roots of the boldest plants, and she noticed far more dragon corpses than before.

_I can be an infernaut later. Focus on the mission._ Viktoria crouched and slashed her dagger across the ground. It snagged on the first tendon it hit. _Don’t panic. Maybe it doesn’t count as ‘undead’ unless it’s actually mobile, and I’m certainly not testing that now._

The diving suit was holding up well. The hit to mobility was well worth the clean air and defense, even if she’d have to avoid uneven ground. Viktoria trudged to the nearest semi-intact corpse - some sort of man-bird hybrid - and stuffed it firmly into her sack. Before her good luck could run out, she focused on Innistrad as intently as possible. Her thoughts of home weren’t half as vivid as her thoughts of Hell, but she felt a smooth groove being worn between the two. She traced the path in her mind until the world fell away and she stood on a glassy Nephalian beach.

The sack felt no less heavy, and the corpse was a little disfigured by the journey but still theoretically marketable. Viktoria set off towards Havengul, ready to make Otto eat his words.


	4. The Efficient Market Hypothesis

Otto stared at the corpse on his workbench for a very long time. Once he dared to touch it, he prodded and measured and sampled it with every tool on his shelf, keeping rigorous notes. After half an hour, he cleared his throat and announced his findings.

“You appear to have overlooked, my esteemed colleague, that Innistrad does not have bird-men.”

“Yeah, ‘cos it’s from Hell.”

Otto reached to facepalm until he remembered his gore-soaked glove. “That’s not the _point,_ Vik.”

“But you believe me now, right?”

“I am reluctantly adding slightly more weight to your Hell-Tourist claim, if only because you are in no fit state to pull this off as a hoax.”

Viktoria beamed with satisfaction.

“But that’s the problem - how can we possibly market this? Mermaid-corpse hoaxes got stale years ago, and even if this bird-man was intact, no credible biologist would believe us. We can’t even say it’s from the _Mystic Uncharted West,_ since our naval trade routes get stronger every year. What’s our play from here?”

Viktoria knew that once Otto had argued for this long, he was on the hook. “The next Erdwal Bazaar is tomorrow, right? Sell it alongside your normal stock with no explanation at all.”

Otto was not amused. “My profit margins are _razor-thin,_ and every inch of table space has to pull its weight.”

“If it doesn’t sell, I’ll reimburse you with interest. Deal?”

Otto made no effort to hide his exhaustion. _“Deal._ And when it doesn’t sell, never tell me about your Hell vacations again.”

Viktoria was already wheeling the corpse into the freezer.

Viktoria arrived fashionably late to the Erdwal Bazaar, and pretended to browse a stall of stone charms diagonally across from Otto. She patrolled the narrow walkways every few minutes, dodging carts of banned books and cursed relics. By noon, Otto had sold half his usual stock while the bird-man cadaver sat and rot. Only a few shoppers noticed it at all, and only to giggle at an absurd forgery. Whenever Otto caught Viktoria making eye contact, he gave the smuggest grin possible.

At dusk, moments before closing, a hooded figure draped in silver jewelry bought the corpse with a fearsomely heavy sack of coins. Once he left, Viktoria ran over to Otto as he counted them out.

“...This is triple what I made at my best Bazaar ever, up to now.”

“So I get sixty percent, right?”

_“Half.”_

Viktoria huffed and stashed her cut in her apron, nearly heavy enough to tear it. She helped Otto break down his stall and cart it home, jingling her pockets as much as possible with every step. He slammed the door without a word.

Viktoria knew she had to outdo herself for next week’s bazaar. She rested as well as she could and commuted to Hell the next morning, with a mental ritual that was almost meditative by now. She arrived next to an ornate stone temple draped in hardy vines slowly succumbing to rot. It held several semi-fresh corpses of cat-men, clearly casualties of battle. She bagged the most intact cadaver and returned.

That week, Otto displayed the cat-man’s corpse front and center despite making no attempt to hype it up. It drew a small crowd and a bidding war, and although the payday wasn’t as absurd as last time, Otto gave Viktoria sixty percent with a glare of _don’t expect this again._

Two days later, Otto passed along an anonymous request for another “Impossible Corpse.” It made no demand for species beyond _surprise me,_ and included an up-front half of an immense payment. Viktoria cleared her schedule and made another delve at once.

This time, Hell’s endless rot encircled a gleaming tower of filigreed metal that refused to tarnish. The roiling clouds had been boxed into geometric slices with varying degrees of precision. No viable corpses lay out in the open, and Viktoria entered the tower with a sense of awe she never knew she could feel in Hell.

The tower felt like it had fallen from a better world, every arch and hallway perfectly crafted with no rivets or seams. It held no corpses, but Viktoria’s professional frustration gave way to gratitude that nothing _unclean_ spoiled the view. The space had clearly been lived in, with bookshelves and workshops on every floor, nothing in which Viktoria remotely understood. She paused before an enormous orrery, tracking five central orbs and dozens of smaller ones in their intricate circuits. The vague images in her mind sharpened into focus, countless self-contained worlds with their own wonders and horrors and adventures and—

Something bludgeoned Viktoria’s helmet from behind, _hard._ Before she could fall forward and crack the faceplate, someone grabbed her wrists and immediately cuffed them. The worlds in her mind dissolved into mist, letting nothing distract her from the two people looming over her. A bronze-skinned man in an absurdly ornate suit of armor and a hairless blue woman wrapped in filigree flashed badges that meant nothing to her.

Once the woman confiscated her dagger, the man barked in an accent Viktoria had never heard before. “We are Hasan Amari and Ennor Thene, with the Bureau of Extraplanar Affairs. We have some questions for you.”


	5. Flight Risk

Hasan escorted Viktoria up the tower at a brisk pace, while Ennor ran ahead with a toolkit. Viktoria’s cramped faceplate fogged up with heat and sweat, and once the shock of the arrest had passed, she resented Hasan and Ennor for denying her the views of architectural beauty. Petty, to be sure, but easier to grapple with than being detained in Hell.

At the top of the tower, Ennor unfurled a circular door onto a roof deck with a metallic bird-shaped device the size of a cramped hut. Hasan popped off Viktoria’s helmet, muttering something about _pressure differentials,_ and entered a hatch at the front of the machine. Ennor led her into the main compartment, with two slightly-padded benches on either side of a round metal chamber. The only windows were tiny slits, giving almost no visibility as the craft silently took off.

With no scenery to watch, Viktoria stared at Ennor, who sullenly stared back. On close inspection, she wasn’t wearing armor - her entire body, except her head and hands, was a curving, hollow sculpture. Once Viktoria’s mind gave up understanding the geometry of it all, the explanation was clear. Ennor had been condemned for her vanity to become an inert mass of metal. Her skin was as blue as a deoxygenated corpse, and Viktoria could only imagine the constant agony of her Hellishly-prolonged life.

Hasan was a tougher riddle. The most straightforward theory was that he was an angel, or whatever other being enforced order here. But why was he working with Ennor? Was she a model prisoner who had been generously deputized? Was she actually a metaphysical enforcer too? Putting aside the “condemned for vanity” theory, she certainly looked the part. Viktoria wished she could see the two of them interact to study their dynamic, but an opaque curtain was drawn between the cockpit and hold.

Viktoria felt the craft decelerate once her hands had lost all circulation. Before she could complain, Ennor tapped a gadget on her belt and the cuffs unlinked, but remained on her wrists. Viktoria focused on home again as intently as possible, but the channel out of Hell was either locked off or destroyed. The visions of other worlds, so vivid a few minutes ago, were now faint afterimages and fading fast. Viktoria was shackled to either Hell or somewhere far stranger. She held back tears, if only to deny Hasan and Ennor the satisfaction.

Half an hour after the craft landed, the door opened onto the strangest city Viktoria had ever seen. The tower by itself has been an elegant work of art, but a whole metropolis in its style was an overload of impossible metallurgy. No street was crooked, no space was wasted, no trash or vandalism sullied the beauty of a city built by and for obsessive watchmakers. Viktoria stared at it from a tower taller than she has thought possible, too awed to remember her fear of heights. A few distant neighborhoods broke the style - classically ornate castles, overgrown stony ziggurats - but the flawless city center held them at arm’s length.

Ennor kept an eye on Viktoria whole Hasan conferred with a crew of colleagues, both normal humans and blue-skinned. Some of the humans had bodies replaced by sculpture, yet still had hair and normal skin tones. Viktoria rejected her “condemned for vanity” theory pending strong new evidence in favor. Most of the blue beings looked like Ennor, but some wore Hasan’s style of armor and a few wore other fashions entirely. Decoding the meaning of it all was currently impossible, but it took Viktoria’s mind off of her bigger impossible problems.

After a few minutes of chatter, the group reached a consensus and waved Ennor over. Viktoria meekly followed, with no desire to learn what other gadgets Ennor had. She was led through a magnificent archway and into a maze of tight halls with unmarked doors, then locked in a cramped office with a humanoid cat.

Viktoria was shocked that she was still capable of shock. She had handled plenty of werewolf corpses, and a six-foot tiger-woman in an ornate blazer was relatively similar, but her brain had decided that this was the last straw. The tiger-woman offered a cup of water and spoke with a soft, musical purr.

“Don’t worry, I’m not with _them,_ I’m on your side. I am Four Hibiscus Petals Alighting Upon A Rippled Stream, but you can call me Hibiscus. Whenever you’re ready to talk, could you please tell me your name, where you’re from, and where you think you are?”

Viktoria sipped her water slowly for fear of choking and stared at Hibiscus’s desk. Most of it was piled high with books in unrecognizable languages, and the rest was covered in jade figurines and tiny flowerpots. She had no idea how much, if at all, to trust Hibiscus but wanted to see where this all would go.

“V-Viktoria Rutstein, Nephalia, and, uh, Hell.”

Hibiscus lit up and grabbed a notepad. _”Nephalia!_ I’ve never heard of that one! What’s it like?”

Viktoria stared blankly, feeling like a fish trying to explain water. “Uh, always cloudy, propped up by vampires, nothing stays dead.”

Hibiscus stopped taking notes and held up a paw. “Wait, I think I’ve heard it mentioned in passing - it’s a province of Innistrad, right?”

Viktoria nodded and felt a faint twinge of hope.

“My deepest condolences. I only know the broad details of its recent troubles, but I hope it can get a reprieve from being ruined by planeswalkers. No offense, of course.”

Viktoria gave a stare of _please back up and explain everything you just said._

Hibiscus cleared her throat. “Viktoria, what was the last thing you did before you first arrived... _here?”_ She gave a vague, all-encompassing wave.

_No sense hiding it any longer._ “I tested a machine that would temporarily kill me.”

Hibiscus did not look shocked. She flipped back through her notes, muttering, _”Yep, that’ll do it, and getting launched to Grixis makes perfect sense...”_

“Pardon, _what_ did you call that place?”

Hibiscus wrote a few more notes and set the pad aside to make eye contact. “I’ll get there soon, I promise. Viktoria, do you know what a planeswalker is?”

“No fuckin’ clue.”

Hibiscus took a breath and began a well-rehearsed speech. “A minuscule portion of sapient beings are born with a latent spark. Surely, most of them live and die none the wiser. When a spark-wielder experiences a great revelation or trauma - sampling death, for instance - the spark ignites and enables them to cross planes of existence. Unwillingly, at first.”

Viktoria sat in rapt attention as her mind refused to accept any of this.

“The first planeswalk is typically a reflection of one’s nature, or the circumstances of the ignition - thus, a necromancer landing in Grixis makes perfect sense.”

An old instinct kicked in before Viktoria could stop it. “Necro- _alchemist.”_

“Sorry, sorry. Any questions?”

Viktoria had plenty, but this crackpot lunacy spoken with smooth and friendly diction was breaking her brain. The Hell theory, for all its horror, was at least reassuringly stable.

“Are you one of them?”

“Heavens, no. I’m simply a professor of interplanar law, and a lawyer on the side. It’s been a very pressing issue here, for reasons which answer your other question.”

Viktoria drank another cup of water and leaned in.

“Hasan, Ennor, and I seem like we’re all from vastly different worlds, right?”

“...Uh huh.”

“That’s because we _are._ This world, Alara, used to be five worlds in total isolation, each missing crucial aspects. Grixis, where you arrived, was incapable of producing new life. Esper, where we are now, was devoid of natural chaos. They have partly merged, but the seams are raw and rough. While not the most dramatic crisis, reconciling five different legal systems - or lack thereof - is an ongoing challenge.”

Viktoria saw Hibiscus with fresh eyes, noticing her constant restraint in a world too small and fragile for her. Her clothes incorporated swirling Esper motifs in a fabric unlike anything worn by locals. She wore a necklace of stylized axe-heads and bracelets of jungle scenes rendered in filigree. For all her efforts to assimilate, she was clearly far from home and very lonely.

Viktoria held up her cuffs. “So, when can I...”

Hibiscus took a moment to return to the issue at hand. “Don’t worry, your hearing’s in a few hours, and you’ll probably just get a slap on the wrist. Locals have done far worse to the Dregscape Protected Zone - they just want to scare you straight.”

Viktoria tried to feel optimistic about her impending trial in a world completely severed from her own. As she slumped back in her chair, a sharp knock rang through the door.

“The allotted time for legal consultancy has ended. Please remain calm as we escort you to your cell.”

With great effort, Viktoria stood up and let blank-faced guards escort her deeper into the metallic maze.


	6. Into The Breach

Viktoria’s cell was cold, spotless, and perfectly dismal. Thin frosted windows, set high in the wall, let in just enough light to discern the general time of day. Viktoria was led in around noon with a stack of nutrient bars, and sunset came and went before she was hungry enough to try one. They looked and smelled almost exactly like the nutrient slurry she had fed to homunculi countless times, which made her briefly reopen her Hell theory. Yet once she finally took a bite, she was pleasantly surprised in the weakest possible way. It was bitter and greasy and combined the worst parts of crunchiness and chewiness, but it had a well-balanced flavor that might, theoretically, be mistaken for fruit. She ate two bars as quickly as possible and sulked on the slightly-padded bed.

A few hours later, a buzzer rang out and Ennor stepped in, flanked by two new blueskins. Viktoria was thrilled that she wouldn’t have to spend the night in lockup, even if that meant having her trial at the bleariest hour possible. She was marched through halls that gradually became wider and more ornate, but always pointedly windowless.

Hasan, Hibiscus, and a half-dozen clerks joined the group in front of giant double doors inlaid with bas-relief art of legendary lawbringers. They swung open into a courtroom clearly designed by Esper and Hasan’s world together, with three judges seated at marble podiums evoking castle turrets. Hibiscus led Viktoria to a wood table as the clerks and functionaries took their places. She was dressed in perfect Esperite style with no foreign notes whatsoever.

Viktoria looked straight ahead and whispered, “Thanks for explaining where I am, but I wish we had time to cover how the courts work here.”

Hibiscus responded in a low purr. “Follow my cues, don’t speak out of turn, and keep it concise.”

Viktoria took a deep breath and tried not to think of the worst days of the Lunarch Inquisition.

A minute later, the clerks finished murmuring and a gavel rang out. The central judge, a bird-man dressed like Hasan, stood to speak.

“I hereby commence case 58944A-6, concerning unlawful extraction from the Dregscape Protected Zone. The Zone-“ He paused and suppressed a grimace - “-is an ecologically and culturally vital area, administered by the Bantian Bureau of Conservation in the absence of any formal government native to Grixis. When it became clear that the perpetrator was not a planar native, jurisdiction moved to the Bureau of Extraplanar Affairs. The defendant, Viktoria Rutstein, is charged with three counts of unlawful corpse extraction. How does she plead?”

Viktoria froze in dread until Hibiscus stood up and set a paw on her shoulder. “Your Honor, there are relevant extenuating circumstances. Viktoria sincerely believed that she had arrived in her home plane’s afterlife. I have since told her the truth, and while ignorance of the law is no excuse, ignorance of the multiverse is potentially a mitigating factor.”

The left judge, a rhinoceros-woman in Esperite fashion, scoffed. “Be that as it may, there is no precedent for such a defense.”

The right judge, a human dressed in the style of Hibiscus’s homeland, quickly cut in. “Extraplanar cases are very scarce and very strange. The concept of precedent itself is of dubious value when each case must grapple with a fundamentally different world.”

The rhino-judge responded just below a bellow. “By that standard, why bother with a legal system at all? If we can reconcile Grixis and Bant under one law, we can account for one interloper.”

The human replied in kind. “Alara is _meant_ to be one plane, and was unified eons ago - just look at the fossil record. Applying our jurisprudence to-“ They gestured to Hibiscus for help.

“Innistrad.”

“-To Innistrad makes no sense at all. Can you tell me anything about Innistrad at all, esteemed colleague?”

The bird-judge slammed his gavel with a sharp crack. “ _Enough!_ Save it for the philosophy lecture-hall. I hereby order the defendant set free, with a warning that planeswalking to Alara again within three years will earn a two-year prison term. _Does anyone object?”_

The courtroom fell silent, save for a lizard-man clacking at a stenography keyboard.

Viktoria exhaled and nodded to Hibiscus.

“We accept the terms, Your Honor.”

In the commotion that followed, Viktoria asked, “Not that I’m complaining, but that’s it?”

Hibiscus gave a familiar sigh. “Yep, that’s Bant-Esper jurisprudence for you.”

Ennor strode over and unlatched Viktoria’s cuffs, and visions of other worlds returned as if a dam had burst. Most of them looked bland or horrific, but she felt a magnetic pull linked imperceptibly to hundreds of other planes. Before she could say goodbye to Hibiscus, Esper’s polished perfection gave way to endless spires and alleys and turbines.

Viktoria stood in a sewer tunnel with the fetid stink of corpses and rot. Apparently, the Multiverse had a sense of humor. She brushed away thoughts of _this must be Hell for real_ and followed the trickle of runoff backwards.

The tunnel was more spacious than any part of the Erdwal - a carriage could fit through it, if its horse didn’t outright refuse to pull. Passages branched off every few dozen paces, marked with graffiti or fungal bouquets bricks missing in patterns that looked significant. A few of them led to austere, perfectly clean metal doors. 

Viktoria ignored them out of boredom or fear until she passed a tunnel that radiated as much necrotic energy as anything on Grixis. After briefly looking for traps, she followed the sensation to a catacomb of bright blue suits of armor spanning a dozen species. Each niche held one suit, with its skull-helm thoroughly smashed, alongside whatever weapons its wearer had used. Not a single suit had a body in it, but the blue mineral itself reeked of stale, hollow necromancy.

The catacombs stretched across five levels for miles, according to a pictogram-map in the central hub. Viktoria stared at the map, then the armor, and let the scale of it overwhelm her. Undeath with industrial precision and quantity, the dream and nightmare of every stitcher in Nephalia. Her youthful daydreams of perfecting such a process now made her stomach turn.

Moral qualms aside, Viktoria was flat broke and needed tools of defense for a world that devised such a process. It was too late to ask Ennor for her knife back, but she suspected its blessing would be meaningless beyond Innistrad anyway. It only took a minute of searching to find a suit that fit her exactly, and after finding that the breastplate had no breathing room whatsoever, she took the gauntlets and a gold-inlaid knife and axe. Even if any of the helmets were intact, she knew better than to ever put a cursed catacomb skull-helm on her head.

Freshly (rottenly?) equipped, Viktoria left the catacomb without looking back and kept tracing a path to higher ground. Before long, she could hear the rhythms of city life above her, and overhead grates gave glimpses of natural light. Increasingly many side-tunnels held parallel metal tracks guiding metal carriages at frightening speeds. Others held tangles creaking, bubbling pipes perpetually on the verge of bursting.

The tunnel terminated in a grate half-clogged with silt and muck. Viktoria turned around to the last interesting-looking branch, a tunnel marked with horned-skull graffiti that looked playful rather than haunting. She knocked on a locked metal door, knife at the ready. After a peephole slid open, a woman in an absurd jester’s costume answered the door.

“Normally I’d tell you to fuck off and audition normally, but you’re in luck - our headliner swallowed a sword a little too far last night and we haven’t replaced their slot yet. What’s your schtick?”

Viktoria took a moment to untangle the implications of what she heard before she realized she was asked a question. “Uh, hi, I’m Viktoria Rutstein, a necro-alchemist from-“

The jester beamed. “Ooh, an Izzet egghead who plays with corpses! _Brilliant,_ wish I thought of it myself. Get on in! Curtains are in five minutes!”

Viktoria stayed on the threshold. “It’s not like that - I don’t want to perform, I just got lost in the sewers and need to get topside. I’m not from around here. I’m _really, really_ not.”

The jester gave her a look of _your story doesn’t remotely add up, but I see weirder things every day._ “Gotcha. Go all the way in, take two rights, and take the stairs up to an alley right off of Tin Street.”

Viktoria nodded profusely and stepped through the door.

“One last thing - I like the gauntlets, but they’re the wrong kind of tasteless for most folks. Keep ‘em hidden unless you absolutely need to win a fight and don’t care about dirty looks. Did you _seriously_ not hear about the invasion where you’re from?”

Viktoria thanked her, dodged the question, and walked through a theatrical backstage full of devils running lines and preparing sets. She did her best to ignore them and reject thoughts of Hell, and took the stairs up into a city unlike anything she had ever seen.


	7. Crossing Paths

The dullest parts of Tin Street were livelier than any part of Havengul had ever been. The pedestrians alone looked like mythical beasts - more blueskins, along with horse-people, elephant-people, servile flesh-constructs, sea-beast hybrids and many very excitable short gray-green people. Viktoria tried not to stare, especially for fear of looking like an easy mark. She found a slightly-secluded park bench and collected her thoughts.

Once Viktoria got past the shock of citizens that looked like dubious taxidermy scans, she noticed something more significant. Everyone either wore a particular style and insignia, or kept their clothes very specifically neutral. A few people, for whom the crowds always parted, wore the harlequin style and horned-skull emblem of the underground theater. Officers with the exact demeanor of Ennor and Hasan bore either a sharp-angled fist or a runic circle within a triangle. A group of small people and blueskins argued over a burst steam pipe, with ornate lab coats and brass instruments that would be the envy of any Nephalian alchemist.

Once Viktoria was satisfied that nobody was staring at her, she considered her next move. _I should definitely return home soon - Otto’s customers must have a lot of questions he can’t answer. But he barely accepted my Hell theory, I need to bring back something that undeniably proves—_

With an ear-splitting crack and a blinding flash, a small person armed to the teeth with brass appeared in front of Viktoria, three feet off the ground. Once she picked herself up, she pointed right at Viktoria’s face and stage-whispered, _”You’re like me!”_

Even if Viktoria had been fully prepared for this, she would be hard-pressed to think of any way in which that was true.

The interloper stared at her through five different lenses and firmly declared, “Your energy signature is unlike any Ravnican I’ve ever seen, and you’re clearly... _from out of town.”_

Viktoria discreetly reached for the gauntlets in her apron. “Pardon, but I don’t have good experiences with people who ambush me to tell me that.”

The ambusher stepped back and put her hands up. Viktoria noticed that her left forearm was gone, replaced by a brass cannon barrel wafting blue steam.

“It’s not like that! I’m sorry! I got caught up in the moment, and I should have handled this better - Look, can we just reset this conversation? C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch.”

Viktoria warily nodded, reasoning that she may as well get a free lunch out of this ordeal. She followed her new friend to a quiet cafe on a side street with just a few patrons, mostly humans and blueskins.

As they were led to a patio table, Viktoria asked, “First off, what’s your name? And I’m sorry, there’s no polite way to ask, but...” She gave a broad wave. “What _are_ you?”

After placing a drink order, the engineer beamed as if she’d been waiting her whole life to answer. “I’m Kravka, and I’m a goblin! We show up a _lot_ across the Multiverse, with dramatically different physiology but an ineffable _core_ of goblinosity that shines through like a beacon. Or maybe it’s just a broad term for whatever fills a certain ecological niche. I dunno! It’s an ongoing debate! What’s your name?”

Viktoria surveyed the area to check for anyone staring and found no response. “I’m Viktoria Rutstein, a human, from Innistrad. Do you know that one? Also, where are you from?”

Kravka paused to pick up her drink from the counter, a hot dark-brown juice that she finished in two gulps. “Never been, but heard great things! I’m from this one, Ravnica. Want some coffee?”

Viktoria sipped the final drops and gagged on the bitter, burnt flavor. She washed it away with water and grabbed the menu, which she couldn’t read.

“You’re pretty new to this, right?”

Viktoria nodded and picked an item at random when the blueskin waiter arrived. “Yeah, just a few weeks in, and this is only the second new plane I’ve been to.” She leaned in to whisper, “By the way, what are the blue-skinned people called? I saw them on Alara too, but never got a chance to ask.”

Kravka replied at full volume. “Those are vedalken, they can be really smug and aloof but they can argue with the best of ‘em. Got any plans while you’re here?”

A beautiful, awful idea dawned on Viktoria. “If I planeswalk, can you follow me exactly?”

Kravka stared into space and traced some diagrams in the air. “I _think_ so. I haven’t tried it before, but it should be possible if I hold onto you. Why do you ask?”

“After lunch, there’s someone on Innistrad I want you to meet.”

Kravka grinned with an unsettling number of sharp teeth. _“I can’t wait.”_

The waiter returned with a stack of frosted pancakes for Kravka and a fluorescent-blue crustacean for Viktoria. Kravka had eaten a whole pancake by the time Viktoria figured out how to crack it open, releasing a plume of fragrant steam. It was deliciously spicy and buttery, nothing at all like the limp, rubbery lobsters of Nephalia. Even with ravenous hunger lowering her standards, she made a note to remember this cafe.

Once they had finished, Kravka paid the bill with impeccably-minted coins and led Viktoria to a desolate alley. Viktoria held her hand - warm and leathery, with a supple softness - and focused on the road just outside Havengul. She felt a crackling stream of energy beside her, ready to trace her path. Clutching the hand tight, she let Tin Street yield to Havengul, with Kravka still by her side.

Viktoria led the way into town, answering Kravka’s questions about Innistradi technological development as best she could. Kravka was sincerely enthralled, but Viktoria felt embarrassed to have such a shabby, gray town to offer a Ravnican.

After nearly getting lost in the thick, spectral fog, Viktoria knocked on Otto’s door. He answered it ready to fire a volley of frustrated questions, all of which left him when he saw Kravka. Viktoria beamed.

“Kravka, please explain to Otto where you’re from.”


	8. Peer Review

Otto stopped taking notes five minutes into Kravka’s speech. He stopped asking questions after ten, and stopped reacting at all after twenty. Kravka regaled him with theories and equations and tangential tales of planes that Viktoria strained to fathom. Judging from Otto’s fixed stare, he had given up on petty categories of _true_ and _false_ and was wondering only how much he should let himself enjoy this. Once Kravka finally finished, he took thirty seconds to realize it.

Otto took a long, slow sip of tea and waves vaguely at both Kravka and Viktoria. “So... how many of you are there?”

Kravka snapped right back into her educational tone. “Sparks occur in roughly one in a million sapient beings, but given an infinite multiverse, the number of planeswalkers approaches infinity too.”

Otto winced at the thought of different infinities and drank more tea. “...Alright then. But all _that_ aside, do you have any more corpses from Not-Hell? My customers keep requesting them and I’m at wit’s end.”

Viktoria grimaced. “There’s kind of a problem there, actually. I’m banned from that plane for three years, and I don’t know how long their years _are.”_

“One Innistradi year equals seven-tenths of an Alaran year,” added Kravka. “With some big error bars, though - my instruments weren’t very precise back then.”

Otto threw his hands up. _”Great._ I have frustrated customers and suspicious constables and no way out. And you might have missed this on your interplanar adventures, Vik, but the clergy who didn’t have their faith shattered are getting _terrifying._ They call themselves the Heron Corps, and they think the only problem with Avacyn’s purge was that it ended too soon.”

Viktoria felt an icy spike of dread. Sorin and that chalk-white woman were undeniably planeswalkers, and their feud had nearly dissolved Innistrad into writhing slurry. Even though other planeswalkers had stopped them, none of them had to stay and live with the fallout. Given the chance, would she abandon the mess too?

In the deathly silence, Kravka held out a gleaming metal canister. “I dunno about all that, but I’ve got a better product for you. Try it!”

Otto unscrewed the lid and sipped the steaming dark-brown beverage. He recoiled, then drank the rest as quickly as he could without scalding himself.

_“Coffee!_ A necessity on any civilized plane! I can sell you a sack of beans every week, and build you a machine to brew it. Interested?”

Otto looked intrigued, but in no mood to start another interplanar business venture. “...Sounds good, but I’ll have to get back you on that. I have to go lie down for a long time.”

Viktoria bid him goodbye and led the way to her flat. Kravka peered intently into every window, oblivious to the townsfolk’s stares at her. Once they were alone, she asked, “What do you do, exactly? Some sort of necromancy? I’ve seen my share of sewer abominations, but I assume your work is a cut above that.”

Viktoria felt a surge of pride. “I’m a necro- _alchemist._ I study rational, replicable reanimation. Is there such a field on Ravnica?”

“Not really. The Izzet don’t really do much biology at all, and the Simic stick to studying the _first_ life. The Orzhov have thrull-making down to a science, but those are pretty pathetic. We _could_ do it, if the guilds collaborated, but nobody will touch large-scale undeath ever since...” She deflated completely. “It’s a shame, lazotep has some amazing properties but it’s off-limits too.”

Viktoria stopped and faced Kravka. “I think I’m missing some crucial context, but I understand if it’s too heavy to talk about.”

Kravka had never sounded less energetic. “A planeswalker invaded Ravnica with a lazotep-coated undead army. He lost, and we’re rebuilding, but...” She sat on a plinth that once held a statue of Avacyn and began to cry. “I’ll take you to the memorial sometime.”

Viktoria sat beside her and offered her shoulder to cry on, painfully aware of the gauntlets weighing down her apron. Once Kravka had collected herself, Viktoria had an idea.

“Tell you what. We’re almost back at my place - how about I shower, put on some better clothes, and you show me your favorite place in the Multiverse?”

Kravka sniffled and nodded. Viktoria led her the final two blocks to her flat, and laid out some semi-fresh fruit before locking herself in the bathroom. She took stock of herself: dried sweat tinged with Grixis odor, an apron covered in fresh stains, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion and stress. She had no idea what Kravka saw in her, beyond being a helpless newcomer in need of advice. She undressed, hiding the lazotep gauntlets deep in her closet, and showered for as long as the hot water lasted. She put on her “pious churchgoer” outfit, which was genuinely lovely even beyond its value as a disguise.

When Viktoria returned, Kravka was flipping through a book from the shelf, a lavishly-illustrated stitcher’s manual. She snapped it shut and returned it, and Viktoria waved away her guilty look.

“Learning anything there?”

Kravka carefully reopened it to a diagram of which species had interoperable muscles. “Yeah. Undeath still scares me, but I’d like to study it from a distance and with a guide. I like how simple and methodical this is, with no lazotep in sight.”

Viktoria smiled and shelved the book. “Ready to go?”

Kravka reached out to hold her hands, clearly savoring the sight of Viktoria’s lace and silk. Viktoria felt a crackling warmth spread through her, evoking a city unlike either Ravnica or Esper. She felt a balmy breeze on her cheek, and she opened her eyes to find herself standing on a rooftop at dusk. The city was a metropolis of whorling brass, as if Esper’s craftsmanship had been infused with passion and warmth. Electric lights switched on across the horizon as flying machines flitted among the birds.

Kravka kept a grip on Viktoria’s hand and spoke with a familiar affection. “The city of Ghirapur, on Kaladesh. I sparked when I made exactly the right rounding error in a teleportation test. For a few hours, I thought I was still on Ravnica.”

Viktoria stifled a giggle.

“Come on! It’s an endless city, the guilds can’t control infinite territory, and “I’m on another plane of existence” is not a good null hypothesis!”

Viktoria peered down to the street fifty feet below, full of light and trinkets and delicious-smelling food. “It’s not that - I first went to Grixis, and thought it was Hell.”

Kravka doubled over laughing. “I can’t blame you! Hey, we still have a few hours until the markets close - want to go shopping?”

Viktoria was already halfway down the stairs.


End file.
